Military and Agility: Practises to Emulate in Corporate World

In today's dynamic, volatile and uncertain external environment, organisations worldwide need help to be more agile. The military has been at the forefront of practising organisational and leadership agility, mastering how to evolve at clock speed. These practices help the military leadership move efficiently through the four decision cycles of observe, orient, decide, and act. Any organisation can significantly enhance its agility by incorporating these practices as part of a broader change initiative.?Here are three specific practices that organisations should emulate from military leadership.

Decision Discretion.?????????Leaders must resist the temptation to dive in to solve a problem that should have someone else's name on it. Leaders should be absolutely clear about what decisions only they can make and push all other decisions as far down the organisation as possible. As a general rule, organisations should reduce decisions by committee and increase decisions by the individuals and teams closest to a particular issue. Highlighting opportunities for a broader constituency of people to be decision-makers reduces reliance on bureaucratic hierarchies that depend solely on the most senior leaders for direction. Over time, people and teams will be empowered to be responsible for decisions within their authority and will act instead of escalating everything to senior leadership.

Establish Intent.????????Commander's intent is a military leader's clarity of the end goal. It means focusing on the why and what while leaving the how to those closest to the front line. It means not micromanaging. Defining intent is the core principle to empower agile and adaptive leaders. In most companies today, frontline employees are instructed to follow one best-way rule. On the other hand, successful principle-based leadership are part of agile organisations. These organisations work with a speed and experimental agility that traditional organisations can only dream of. These companies know that training people to follow prescribed rules can reduce the organisation's speed, agility, and adaptability. When faced with unexpected situations, people in rules-based organisations wait for the chain of command to produce an answer. Those in principles-based companies solve problems themselves. Corporate leaders must invest the time to articulate the why and what of target outcomes and convey a big-picture strategy in simple language. They should then empower people in the team to take the initiative to innovate.

Find A Directed Telescope.?????????A directed telescope is a concept where the leader nominates a set of officers as their eyes and ears in the field. To be actively receptive and responsive to new and changing external conditions is critical for leaders of any organisation. Keeping in close contact with the outside world from the perspective of employees, customers, suppliers, board members, and other stakeholders becomes increasingly critical in a world where the pace of change seems to be ever-increasing. In the corporate world, a directed telescope pipeline of information can come in the form of senior advisors, external coaches, or trusted colleagues at any level from inside the organisation - anyone who can provide the manager with greater awareness and environmental insight. With candid feedback on what is happening on the ground, managers can improve their agility and the agility of their organisations.

Increasing leadership agility and, in turn, the agility of the wider organisation is difficult. It requires changes to the ingrained mindsets and behaviours of senior individuals who have been successful in their careers. Managers who recognise the need for organisational change usually fail to see themselves as one of the things that need changing. They may set the goal of increased agility for the organisation but then neglect to establish a feedback loop for insight into how their leadership behaviours may interfere with achieving that goal. Military leaders invest significant resources in discussing and experimenting with innovative solutions. Business organisations must adopt a similarly urgent rethink, particularly on the mindset and behaviours required for sustained organisational agility.

Credit: What the Military Can Teach Organisations About Agility?by?David Gillespie, MIT, Cambridge, MA Spring 2019

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